Chapter 15

Qi Qian'er sat cross-legged on the straw of the big flatbed cart, and the old woman looked her over and over, uneasy at heart.

When Chang Lianfang and Meng Wanquan had finished handing over the paperwork, and just as they were setting off, she came trotting up again, dug a dozen-odd dried taro chips out of her belly-band, wrapped them in a coarse-cloth kerchief, and passed them to Qi Qian'er.

This old woman's belly-band was like a fairy's bag — the dried taro inside it never ran out.

Once Qi Qian'er had tucked the taro into her bosom, the old woman drew from the sleeve of her lined jacket a string of hand-torn paper money and said: "We don't keep such paper at home; this was left over from when your father-in-law passed. We haven't got scissors in the house either, so Granny just tore off a string any old how. When you get over there, if you can find your mother's grave at all, burn it for her — set her mind at ease, and let her buy a winter coat against the cold, hear?"

And Qi Qian'er's heart — the old woman twisted it up like a fried dough-twist.

Sniffling, tears falling, she nodded and nodded.

Watching the cart move off, the old woman still chased a few steps after it, urging: "Girl, just go and take a look — and if you can't find your family's things... we'll not be cross about it. You come back safe and soon; we've got everything at home, we're short of nothing."

That was her fretting that if the girl came back empty-handed she'd feel she had no account to give.

Through her tears Qi Qian'er waved and said: "I've got it! Set your mind at ease, Granny — you wait for me here; it's no great distance, and I'll be back by the time the sun goes hazy."

"Aye, I'll wait for you — I'll not go anywhere!"

Once they'd gone off into the distance, the old woman turned back, all mushy and clinging, and said to Meng Wanquan: "This girl, I tell you — one night with her, and it's as if we'd known each other two lifetimes. Such a little while, and how is it I'm missing her already?"

Meng Wanquan nearly had his back teeth soured out of his head at the words.

What kind of business was this? The old woman's heart was crooked: there was Madam Qiao emptying the chamber pots and waiting on her day after day, and taking beatings for it besides, and the old woman never gave her half a good word.

There was no telling what sort of bewitching brew this young wife had poured down the old woman, that in a single night she'd charmed her into such fretting, heart-tugging devotion.

Meng Wanquan didn't want to take up the subject, and pointed at the crowd of women not far off, who'd already stood up to watch the fun: "Old granny, look over there — your own daughter-in-law's over that way!"

The old woman shot a glance that way and said at once, scornful: "'Own daughter-in-law,' nothing — don't go talking nonsense; your fourth uncle hasn't so much as a marriage contract with her."

At this Meng Wanquan sucked in a cold breath, and the look on the old woman's face gave him a bad feeling.

To all outward appearance there truly wasn't a fault to find in Madam Qiao; who didn't praise her as gentle and virtuous, dutiful and well-mannered?

"I must say, Granny — that's rather a hurtful way to put it..."

Meng Wanquan, righteous of heart, meant to put in a few good words for Madam Qiao.

But the old woman had been woken up now, and she'd no longer talk the way she used to — that Madam Qiao was a home-wrecking imp, a house-ruining thief, and other such feeble stuff that got you nowhere. She had to learn to talk the way the girl did; that was what carried weight.

So she said to Meng Wanquan with a smile: "Da-quan, do you think Granny's playing favorites?"

Meng Wanquan shook his head like a rattle-drum.

That mean streak surfaced on the old woman's face again — heh, learn fine words though she might, her failings she still couldn't mend.

"Granny won't hide it from you: Qiao's been in the family three years, and — let's not go on about her being no good — she came to us halfway along. But take your fourth uncle: for my house to have come to such a pass... it's him I blame, for never standing up straight like a man.

"You know he's in charge of the grain-transport route; and whatever bit Scabby and the other two managed to put by, each time it was their fourth uncle they had it carried home by. Your fourth uncle used to say I was old, my head slow and muddled, no match for Qiao's quickness — and that I grant! I can't so much as reckon a sum. Back then I wanted to get on well with her, too; if she wanted to take the household accounts in hand, well, poor broken-down house that we were, let her manage it. Now you reckon it up: wasn't it once every three or four months that your fourth uncle would bring pay-silver and grain?"

Meng Wanquan nodded — that was so; each time Fourth Uncle Chen came home he'd say he was bringing pay-silver and grain for the old woman.

The old woman clapped her hands and showed him an empty palm: "I'm blind, you know that? Your granny can't reckon figures, and never knew how much they drew for risking their lives. Last night, just chatting idle things with Scabby's wife — she was telling of some other household's affairs — I put my mind to it and reckoned, and something's not right! Da-quan, before, Granny never once asked you how much you drew a month; whatever it was seemed fine to me — being alive was enough, and the rest is just things outside the body!

"But thinking on it now — how it galls me! Don't I know how much is in my own pocket? Even if I wanted to spend, Da-quan, you tell me — where's there to go and blow it?

"Nowhere! Cutting off the head and the tail of it, reckon that Qiao's kept the accounts three years, and all of it 'given to me, the old woman.' Family shame's not to be aired abroad — but you're no outsider, Da-quan, so I'll tell you: Granny has a favor to ask of you today too..."

Meng Wanquan nodded quickly: "Granny, say on!"

"What I say next, you mustn't breathe a word of it abroad — all right?"

Seeing Meng Wanquan agree again, the old woman said with a bitter smile: "For five years now I've scrimped and saved on my own, doing mending and washing for people; over these years I've put by twenty strings of cash, and there's those few head of livestock and this and that odd bit besides — I keep it clear in my head: what's mine, and what they gave me, I store apart.

"As Heaven and my conscience are my witness — in broad daylight I'd not dare tell a lie — all told I took from Qiao's hands fifteen strings and six hundred coppers, and thirty jin of grain a month; not one liang more did this old woman get her hands on. Do you believe me? Eh?"

At this Meng Wanquan was struck dumb on the spot.

---

Along a single artery, the refugees ran like river-water to the sea, endless, the old supported and the young led by the hand, all rushing toward Qingfeng city for a mouthful of relief gruel.

Qi Qian'er and Chang Lianfang, with a squad of government soldiers, threaded their way through along the post road; she hadn't pointed them toward Huo Manor, but toward the foot of Quanqian Mountain, taking the long way round.

In an inconspicuous nook at the foot of that mountain — the old dynasty's windfall wealth was really the secondary matter; it was that donkey Qi Qian'er had had on her mind these four days.

When she'd left, she'd set out fodder enough, and barred the door from inside.

She'd reckoned that if the refugees were all clustered round the relief cauldrons outside the city, not roaming loose, then maybe her donkey cart might have been kept safe.

Now, with Chang Lianfang's company, she meant to go over and chance her luck.

Seeing Qi Qian'er staring fixedly at the refugees, Chang Lianfang thought his sister-in-law was afraid, and comforted her with a smile: "Don't fret, sister-in-law. His Majesty has already sent down an edict to Mingsheng and the other prefectures, ordering them to gather grain and fodder in haste to relieve the disaster-folk; the relief grain will arrive in a few days, and Qingfeng's north granary can hold out a few days yet — there'll be no disorder, never fear."

Qi Qian'er nodded at this, and said not a word more.

It wasn't that the new Emperor was a bad man — he did mean to save them; what he hadn't foreseen was that a few days into winter, snow in flakes the size of leaves would fall for eight days, and the dead would be past all counting.

Never mind the new Emperor — even a great immortal come down to earth couldn't have saved so many mouths.

As the old saying goes, only when the realm is settled is money money at all; when the realm's unsettled and the people are scattered and homeless, then even if you want to spend, there has to be somewhere to spend it.

How many years of fighting had there been now? Last year the farms around Qingfeng hadn't sown in season, and this year there was no autumn harvest to speak of.

The people had all fled; never mind grain — go and look in Qingfeng city, and the once-bustling apothecaries and goldsmiths and drapers, even the pickle-peddlers who sold their seasonings, had long since vanished who knew where.

Everyone under heaven thought there was a living to be had at the Son of Heaven's feet — but the trouble was, the old dynasty's Son of Heaven had been dead only a few days, hadn't he.

If the Son of Heaven himself couldn't stay alive, what of these people?

Two lifetimes of it; she'd long since gone numb.

Seeing government soldiers come, the refugees split fearfully into two halves, watching Qi Qian'er and the rest go by with strange looks on their faces.

Qi Qian'er felt rather awkward.

A whole troop of soldiers, and there on the very first cart sat a thin-haired young wife... The thought of thin hair made Qi Qian'er reach up and give the top of her head a pat.

Well now — another handful of hair.

Off the post road, free of the refugees' press, the little mountain-village track went smoothly enough. Chang Lianfang was a gentleman, and only led the way up front; beyond his comforting a moment ago, he said not one word more than needful to Qi Qian'er.

But Qi Qian'er, watching his back, found her head filling with thoughts.

A man like Chang Lianfang, when he'd fallen among the grass, had fallen among the tender grass of spring: it was on the strength of a shrewd father pulling him along in front, and his own flesh-and-blood brothers able to haul and push, that he walked the bright and proper road.

He did his work by honest blade and spear, taking no shortcuts — but he had people above him, so his good deeds counted as merit, and there were those who knew to promote him; and that was how there came to be, from here on, the second-rank Senior General Chang Lianfang.

His family's gate, in later years, was one they could never reach up to — and it wasn't that Chang Lianfang was heartless; it was that the Chen family, ashamed of their own meanness, didn't dare go and make nuisances of themselves at his door. They were even too embarrassed to say it abroad: You know the Senior General? He's our granny's godson...

Such a thing couldn't be said! couldn't even be mentioned! Even to keep up as ordinary relations, with empty hands you'd be too ashamed to call at his gate.

And to come bearing gifts — you'd beggar your whole house, and it still might not so much as catch his eye. The inner quarters aren't ruled by the men; and if the old woman went trading on her old face, how would his wife and elders look on it?

And so the old woman muttered of it to her dying day, yet no one ever went to the Chang house to tell them she'd passed.

Whose old woman? Their old woman lived on the finest rice and flour, no one knew how well.

It was only at the first-anniversary rites after the old woman's death that Chang Lianfang — risen to third rank by then — came to burn paper at her grave; and when he left, from that day the Chen and Chang families were at the end of the road together.

And what sort were the people who lived on Quanhou Street? Old-dynasty officials up to their necks in tangled debts and murky prospects; the mud-legged Tan-army men who couldn't get into Yanjing; a huddle of illiterate coarse soldiers; and, last of all, a pack of home-wrecking women who could see no further than three inches past their own gate.

She'd not cover her own shame either — she was no fine bird herself... In the middle of her brooding, a few hundred paces ahead she could just make out the Plague God's temple among the heaps of dead trees at the mountain's foot.

"Brother Chang."

Qi Qian'er called ahead to Chang Lianfang.

Chang Lianfang reined his horse around and came back: "Is there something, sister-in-law?"

Qi Qian'er gave him an embarrassed smile, pointed toward the woods over there, and, lowering her head a little bashfully, said: "Sorry to trouble you, uncle — wait a moment, would you; I need to... see to something."

At this Chang Lianfang started, and in an instant that flower-face of his flushed scarlet.

Flustered, he nodded: "Then go on, sister-in-law; we'll wait for you here."

Qi Qian'er hastily got down from the cart and, head lowered, hurried off that way.

All the way she was thinking: when I lead the donkey cart out in a while, what am I to say?

"Uncle? Look — I've found a donkey. With a cart hitched behind it, no less...?"

Turning it over and over, Qi Qian'er reached the front of the Plague God's temple; she pushed at the door — still barred!

Heh! Her donkey cart was as good as hers.

Overjoyed, Qi Qian'er fished out a bamboo sliver from under the stone idol at the temple gate — one she'd prepared long before.

Working the bamboo sliver into the crack of the door, she began to lift the wooden bar within; a few deft moves and, with a click, the door swung open.

As Qi Qian'er stepped into the temple — before she'd even laid eyes on her donkey — she felt a chill sweep across her brow, and two streaks of cold light, edged with a reek of blood, came rushing straight at her face...

Qi Qian'er this life was not as she'd been before: her strength was great, her five senses keen, and the moment she sensed the danger — as chance would have it — the very spot she stood on was the place where that eunuch Liao had killed his men.

That night in the tree-hollow she'd seen nothing else, only the ghostly shape of the eunuch Liao, and how, with a move and a half, clean and crisp, three lives were snuffed out.

In the blink of an eye, Qi Qian'er's body went by instinct straight to meet the cold light; her eyes were sharp too, and in mid-air she made out that the two streaks of cold light were two little knives.

She'd seen little of the world, and knew nothing of the martial world.

In fact they weren't little knives, but two common throwing darts.

At the sight of the hidden weapons Qi Qian'er's heart flustered a little, but she couldn't check her own momentum, and so, in a graceless snatch-and-sprawl, she caught the two darts and went down full-length on the ground before her, flat as a prostrating worshipper... and a cloud of dust flew up.

The people in the temple, for their part: "...!!"

Not knowing what to say — and with those two darts thrown, they hadn't the strength left to throw anything more.

Qi Qian'er's chest ached hard from the fall, and she'd bitten a mouthful of mud.

It took her a good while of scrabbling to catch her breath; then she sat up with a thump and spat and spat at the ground — people had died here and stained it with blood, and it sickened her utterly.

When she'd done spitting and stood up, she caught sight of the collapsed old well in the yard, and another wave of nausea took her; she braced herself on the wall and began to dry-heave.

As for the one who'd thrown the darts, the taste of it in his heart was hard to put into words. To think that he, Gu Hongyun, had licked blood off the blade half his life in the cause of chivalry and justice — how many souls that deserved to die had fallen beneath his Qingluan sword! Yet this time, for the sake of a promise to his sect, to guard the only two bloodlines left of a loyal and upright line, he'd done the one dishonorable thing of his life — and well! his first time ambushing anyone, and he'd flung his darts and flat-out made a little girl throw up?

Tell that abroad — would anyone believe it?

Qi Qian'er heaved her guts up a while, and when there was nothing left to bring up, she finally turned her face to look about the yard.

Mm — this yard was a lively place indeed.

Her donkey was tied to a pillar of the temple gallery, its mouth bound tight with hemp rope, staring at her out of its donkey eyes, aggrieved.

A middle-aged man, a blood-soaked strip of cloth bound across his chest, sat pressing a hand to his heart, leaning against the wheel of the very awning-cart she'd been pining for.

The cart's door-curtain was lifted, and a woman of thirty-odd, her pretty face full of alarm, was watching her in terror — and in that woman's arms, wrapped in a fine brocade quilt, was a pair of small children, four or five years old.

Anyone could see the two little ones had been fast asleep in the dead of night and snatched up in haste to flee, not even time to put their shoes on: four little feet, grubby and black, dangled bare below the brocade quilt.

Of the pair, one had its back turned; the other, its face all grey with dust, stared at Qi Qian'er with a pair of wide, clear-whited, frightened eyes that had half their soul scared out of them.

All three on the cart were trembling; after a long moment locking eyes with Qi Qian'er, the woman's lips twitched and she looked about to cry.

But her tears had scarcely fallen when the child with its back turned let out a wail; and whatever came over Qi Qian'er — as if some spirit moved her — she said to the people in the yard: "Don't go making the child cry! Outside — I tell you, not two hundred paces outside — is my uncle, the city-storming general the Emperor's just made, and he's waiting for me with his men."

At this the woman, frightened, stopped her tears at once and reached to cover the crying child's mouth.

Mm — by the look of them, they were surely of the old dynasty.

Looking at the wide-eyed child, Qi Qian'er felt a pang; and without much thought she reached back and shut the door of the Plague God's temple, closing off the troop of horsemen far outside.

She didn't understand what, in this world, made a person good or bad. But she had one principle in her heart that no one could cross, and it was this: how many days had these babes been in the world of men? What good food had they never tasted, what good things had they never known — they oughtn't to die; at that age there was no sin in them; the grown-ups' affairs, what right had they to drag the children down to death for them?

Seeing that Qi Qian'er meant no harm, the middle-aged man leaning by the cart-wheel, his face full of shame, cupped his hands with difficulty: "I've wronged you, miss. Cough..."

The moment he opened his mouth, he spat out a mouthful of black blood.

Qi Qian'er rolled her eyes up at the sky, thinking: Lord Plague God above, you've watched this bitter-fated creature grow up — I'm not like these people. Punish these lightning-blasted ones with blood-vomiting if you must, but don't lay it on my head. Come tomorrow I'll clean up the filth and dung under your feet for you; I make a vow — I'll surely have your golden likeness recast and build you a great temple...

What an unlucky, evil temple it was — everyone who came in was sure to vomit blood, mouthful after mouthful, and all of it black.

Gu Hongyun spat up a few mouthfuls of the stagnant blood in his chest before looking Qi Qian'er over.

His eye was of course nothing like Chang Lianfang's and the others'. Chang Lianfang's family trained in the war-craft made for the court's use. Gu Hongyun, though, was the chief disciple of the Benyi Sword of the Qianchu Pavilion, one of the Twelve Gates of the northern school of martial houses; from the age of seven he'd trained in the internal arts.

Internal master reading internal master, at a single glance he saw that this strange girl's whole body of innate primordial qi was careering about mindlessly, and that the channels through her body seemed as if forcibly widened by someone — the barriers in the meridians that ought to be crossed layer by layer, by years and diligence, had every one been thrown open for her.

He had heard his master say, in the old days, that there were doting elders who'd spend their whole lifetime's inner power to force open a child's sinews and channels — and that this feeding of primordial qi to open the channels was, more often than not, something one could only do at the cost of one's life.

For, mark you, once that qi was given out, it never came back.

A person is born with but a single breath of primordial qi, and when that breath is gone, he breathes his last.

To open channels with qi in this way was a dangerous thing in itself, not something you could do just because you wished to. Besides, it took decades of nurture in the healing arts, a knowledge of the body's twelve meridians, twelve divergent channels, twelve sinew-channels, twelve cutaneous regions — and the meridians alone divided into the three of the hand and the three of the foot, each split into yin and yang, a complexity beyond words to set out.

He himself, for instance, having laid his foundation and nurtured his qi from the age of seven, had only now opened the three yin-and-yang meridians of the hand.

But this strange girl before him — never mind that every channel in her body was thrown wide open, by the look of her just now she'd acted purely on the instinct of her qi-sense, reckless beyond all measure.

And it truly was... such a terrible waste.

In the old days, had his sect seen material like this, they'd have found some way — galloped thousands of li without sleep or rest — to coax so fine a roof-beam of a talent in through their gate, cherished and taught her with all their care; and when a few decades had passed, she'd surely have been a pillar fit to head the house, the makings of a Pavilion Master.